Follow-up

Kazakhstan’s Lower Chamber of the Parliament - Mazhilis - has organized an international conference “President. Parliament. Integration” before the Day of the First President (1 December) in Astana, and invited members of parliaments of Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, representatives of international organizations and experts in the field of economic integration to partake, Tengrinews reports.

The Kazakh Senate Speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev stressed that the Eurasian Economic Union that is to come into force starting 2015 had to develop gradually.

“Eurasian Economic Union must develop gradually, without hasty moves or rushing forward. Otherwise, we can compromise the main objectives of the organization. They consist in building an integration and a mutually beneficial cooperation. Eurasian Economic Union must be attractive first of all for its members, and also for the countries that are eyeing the union. All the decisions of the Eurasian Economic Union will be taken by consensus, with the consent of all the participating States," Tokayev said.

Nikolai Samoseiko, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus echoed Tokayev by saying that a "Eurasian Parliament” would not solve all the pressing problems of the Union.

"It is obvious that any new integrative economic union is considering the parliamentary dimension to one extent or another. It was also logical that during the preparation of the Treaty establishing the Eurasian Economic Union the issue of forming a parliamentary structure was raised. I think that our parties have come to the right decision by signing an agreement which does not provide for any parliamentary organizations. Maybe this would sound too straight forward, but at the moment I do not think that by creating, say, a Eurasian Parliament we can solve many of the current pressing problems and issues of the Eurasian Economic Union," Samoseiko said.

But he added that a parliamentary body could be put in place sooner or later and “time will show” the nature of the new body and whether it would necessarily have to be a full-fledged parliament or just an inter-parliamentary assembly.

The Chairman of the State Duma of Russia Sergey Naryshkin hasn’t mentioned a “Eurasian Parliament” but he talked about the importance of active interaction of the EEU countries’ parliamentarians.

He pointed out that harmonization and unification of the legislation was given particular importance in the EAEC Treaty. In this regard, he said that countries had to strengthen inter-parliamentary cooperation.

Naryshkin suggested doing this in three steps: adding compulsory examination of national laws for compliance with the agreement adopted under the Eurasian Economic Union into the schedules of parliamentary meetings; scheduling joint meetings of parliamentary committees to discuss the most important programs and documents in the framework of the integration processes; regularly conducting roundtables and other meetings with the participation of deputies, experts and entrepreneurs on the most important legislative questions of the Union.

The Russian official added that it would be important to gather for a discussion of the first results of Union in the fall of next year in Kazakhstan, given the “notable role of Kazakhstan in the Eurasian integration”.